A remote recruitment strategy is a plan that explains what roles we will be hiring for, why, by when and how. The strategy should also be tied to the company’s objectives, mission and vision in order to ensure a cultural fit.

If a company introduces flexible working by deciding to embrace a hybrid or remote-first model, a remote recruitment strategy is essential. Why? Because we don’t want to perform random recruitment activities which may lead to poor results. We don’t want to miss out on amazing talent, neglect cultural diversity and offer salaries based on our gut feeling.

What we want to do is perform well-prepared and thorough activities seeking to target the correct talent pool, identify potential candidates who possess the sought-after skillset, prepare a transparent and effective recruitment process as well as assess the company’s position on the market against its competitors.

Traits of a wise strategy

A proper recruitment strategy consists of designing an effective candidate acquisition approach which is fast, cost-efficient, scalable and ensures a relatively short time-to hire.

So, let’s dig deeper into the topic and plan our strategy. The more we define in the beginning, the easier it will be to perform the entire remote recruitment process afterwards. Also, if we eventually decide to outsource the candidate sourcing process to a headhunter, it’s crucial to provide relevant instructions. The blind leading the blind would be a silly approach to begin with. So, which elements of the talent planning process can’t we miss?

• Identification of the recruitment need

Before we start recruiting activities, we should assess the vacancy within our team by answering a few questions thanks to which we will be able to visualize our future hire and fully indicate the role’s scope and impact within our team:

• Where exactly can we see a gap in the team/company?
• Why are we willing to hire?
• What hard skills are we looking for?
• What soft skills do you require for this position?
• How much are we willing to pay?

• A talent pool assessment

Performing a short talent pool assessment will help us to determine if the position is easy or hard to find, the sources of where we may find potential candidates as well as recruitment resources that we will use in order to attract the right people. At this stage, let’s try to answer a few simple questions:

• Do we need to hire in a certain time zone? If yes, then which one and does it create a list of countries where our future team members  should be located? Are we legally eligible to hire talent out there?
• Are there companies that we follow due to their working environment, company culture and skills of employees? If so, is it possible to win such a new team member for ourselves?
• Are we hiring for a very complex position with skills and knowledge that are hard to find? Or is the potential talent pool very broad?

Determination of recruitment sources

Once we choose our talent pools, it is going to be important to tailor the recruitment strategy to each vacancy in detail by selecting relevant job boards, social media and preparing keywords to proceed with headhunting activities. The choice of recruitment sources should be justified – don’t select them randomly! As we are hiring globally, we should choose job boards and social media channels that reach the broadest talent and allow us to become noticed and found by the right people. However, if the position is identified as very complex, it may be justified to engage a headhunter in order to conduct a detailed search.

Some of the most valued job boards for remote recruitment are the following ones:

• Remote.co
• Weworkremotely.com
• Remotive.io

Anyway, I highly recommend that your don’t limit yourself to these sources only as you may want to target candidates who are looking for a job elsewhere – from Indeed, through LinkedIn job posting, Facebook and many, many other.

Teamwork is the key to success

Keep in mind that once we’ve analyzed how we want to approach the recruitment process and we are ready for takeoff, we can’t possibly forget to engage our team. Once amazing candidates start applying, we should be ready to start a recruitment process that will be transparent, efficient, and as pleasant as possible. Naturally, we are aiming to ensure a top candidate experience, right? Therefore, we must outline the process itself so that we don’t get stuck in between.

Make sure to prepare your remote recruitment team by planning who will be engaged in the process and at which stage. In other words, which team or company member will participate in recruitment meetings and why? Who will assess hard skills and who will be responsible for conducting the culture fit assessment? Or maybe, some of these elements can be automated? Anyway, if you are not just a one-man show, the future hire is most probably going to work in a team. That’s why the candidate should definitely get to know other team members.

You will know that your remote recruitment strategy is complete if you have answered “yes” to the following questions:

• Can you identify your talent pool?
• Have you benchmarked the vacancy against other ones that are currently on the job market?
• Have you chosen relevant recruitment sources?
• Has your core team participated in the talent planning process?
• Have you designed a recruitment process aiming for a short time-to-hire?

I strongly believe that you’ve either responded yes to all questions or… you will do so in the near future. For more resources on how to approach remote recruitment, make sure to check out my videos for more tips.